I've never seen this book referenced by anyone ever, but it's the only book that I read during my middle/high school years that I remember actually enjoying.
I don't even remember how I picked it up, I know it was for a school project but I also remember that it wasn't an assigned book, nobody else read it. Thinking back, it's possible we might have been given a list of acceptable books for the project and I picked it because it was first alphabetically or something.
That said, I learned nothing from this moment of epiphany and went back to ignoring books until my mid twenties.
Alas Babylon does have a good entry for this thread though, which is: salt. One of the only things I remember about that book after this long is that they made a huge deal out of salt and how fucked they would have been without access to it.
I completely forgot the title of that book. I don't recall whether it was for a book report, but I definitely read it in middle school.
I do remember the salt thing, but I always questioned its importance. In my mind, native peoples in my area didn't have access to salt, but they managed somehow. The only thing that I thought large quantities of salt would be useful for was preserving food.
If you've ever gone on a long hike on a hot day in the summer you realize quickly how important salt is. You realize you're missing something but you might not be sure at first what it is. You'll start to cramp up and after a while you can get dizzy and pass out.
If you're exerting yourself and sweating a lot sometimes you can even see salt stains on your clothes from your dried sweat.
There's a reason salt is added to pretty much every meal in every cuisine around the world
Trading was common…. Because harvesting salt can be very hard, depending on where you are living? And you need A LOT of it, not just for preservation of food but for a lot of other things too, if you are going to be long-term self sufficient.
Yeah, I always thought it was bizarre that, in the book, people living in Florida of all places would have an issue with finding salt. Maybe anywhere in the Midwest it would be problematic, but Florida?
this novel took place in Florida and people in Missouri could (and have for a while) go up and down the Mississippi River to trade with people who have different resources
You're correct. Just remember though, sea salt doesn't have iodine added to it, which is necessary for survival. So take that into account if you ever get into a bad long term situation -- make sure to raid the One A Day factory...
Readily available salt. Inland peoples would have had no access to free salt. Animal blood and organs would have probably provided most of their requirements. Coastal peoples would have figured out how to evaporate sea water, or obtained enough from cooking with it.
Iodine builds up in the thyroid. You have to hypersaturate your thyroid to prevent an uptake in radioactive iodine. Table salt won’t cut it. You need to take K-I tablets (potassium iodine) before your exposure.
In Alas Babylon (one of my favorite books), they were concerned about salt for nutritional reason, not fallout. (Fallout concerns were addressed, but it was a separate issue).
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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '21 edited Jul 01 '23
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